STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Before you give your sweetheart the cold shoulder for not sending you flowers for Valentine's Day, you might want to give him the benefit of the doubt when he says they're on the way.

The delivery person may not have been able to get there on time.

With a snowstorm on one of the busiest days of the year for flower shops, florists said on Thursday they are stressed about meeting their holiday deadlines.

"Most florists are under an extreme amount of stress because we have
pre-ordered most of our roses and other flowers, but we can't deliver them," said Sue Kirchhoffer, owner of Moravian Florist in New Dorp.

"We don't know what the conditions will be tomorrow, and we
want to make all the deliveries that have been promised to our
customers," she added.

On Wednesday, Moravian Florist contacted some customers by phone to see if they could deliver their flowers early.

"We
made 235 deliveries yesterday (Wednesday)," she said. "On Valentine's Day we
usually do up to 500 deliveries and even if the demand was there this
year, I don't think we could do it because of the weather."

But you still have a better chance of getting your honey his or her floral delivery by Valentine's Day if you ordered from a local flower shop. It has been reported the storm has led to service delays by FedEx and UPS.

"FTD is making it our top priority to help Cupid win out over Mother Nature," said Emily Bucholz, marketing director for FTD.

She said FTD has been "proactively working with our global shipping partners to deliver flowers early, in advance of weather issues."

"FTD is geo-targeting email communications to our customers when we are aware that their order may be impacted by the weather. We're working on the best delivery solutions in these instances," Ms. Bucholz said.

Like FTD,1-800-Flowers.com is trying to schedule Valentine's deliveries early.

"We reached out to our customers to let them know that we were moving some deliveries up for early delivery -- to make sure we deliver a smile for their Valentine -- ahead of any winter storms in impacted areas," said Yanique Woodall, a 1800flowers.com spokeswoman.

Many Staten Island-based florists say business is down by at
least 60 percent and "walk-in" traffic on the day before Valentine's
day was minimal.

"We are going to lose money; I don't think we are going to make money this year... This is very devastating for us," she added.

Between plowing costs and amount of roses pre-ordered that may not get purchased, the shop is lucky if it breaks even, she said.

"Holiday flowers cost more. Just for the freight it's usually a fee of 30 percent higher," said Ms. Kirchhoffer.

While most Staten Island-based florists say they will make their best
attempt to get all their deliveries made by midnight Friday, they say
they've been hardest-hit by the lack of last minute orders.

"We
have eight drivers for deliveries and plenty of flowers to go around,
but we have absolutely no walk-in traffic," said Debbie Ballaro, owner
of Eltingville Florist.

"The snow is good for us to catch up for tomorrow's deliveries, but it's not good from a business standpoint."

With
traffic slow going, Flowers by Bernard in Great Kills hired extra
drivers to try to make all the scheduled Valentine Day deliveries.

"My
new thinking is that it's 'Valentine's Day weekend,'" said Irving
David, owner of Flowers by Bernard. "If you get your flowers at 10 p.m.
on Friday night it's good for the whole weekend."

He said that once the snow let's up the last-minute shoppers will likely scramble for flowers on Friday.

"Tomorrow is going to be insane...We plan to start delivering at 7:30 a.m.," he said.